Berit Helgheim

Teaching Business Process Concepts Using Enterprise Systems in a Globalized Context

There is significant growth in global business operations and ERP systems are deemed as important applications in order to unify and improve fragmented and globalised markets. These systems are complex and students struggle to grasp not only the underlying business concepts but also the technology involved. This paper describes the design and implementation of teaching materials for a multinational cross-company collaboration assignment using a commercial ERP system. It includes elements of i) integrated business processes, ii) globalization and iii) experiential learning in Masters courses at two universities - one in Australia and the other in Norway. We discuss the lessons learned from the pilot study including the development of an evaluation tool, inter-university student communication, evaluation of the learning outcome, and the benefits of the cross-country business role play exercise.

Globalization creates new challenges in higher education - Two new educational activities addressing the challenges

This chapter explores how educational institutions are faced with changes in the modern global business environment, and how this leads to a need for changes in curricula for universities in general and for business schools and information systems (IS) schools in particular. Most of academia still uses a strict disciplinary model of education resulting in a high degree of specialization within each discipline, while modern business environments require knowledge workers who can address problems that cut across disciplines on an increasingly global scale. Both researchers and governments observing this trend have called for a change in higher education over the last decade. Although suggestions vary for what such a change should encompass, all agree that there is a need to increase the focus on the following three topics: (1) globalization, (2) collaborative skills and (3) information literacy. How to incorporate these topics into curricula has been a subject of debate and this is still an open question, but it is clear that especially topics 2) and 3) need to be based on students’ experience and training instead of typical classroom lectures. We take a practical approach by introducing two new multinational educational activities to develop skills related to the three topics of globalization, collaborative skills and information literacy. Activity 1 is global supply chain management using an ERP system and Activity 2 is a Virtual Team Role Play using virtual world software. Results from several pilot studies using these techniques in two universities in Norway and Australia are discussed.